It blows my mind people still play this game. It was great, in 2017.
Pokémon Go players are altering public map data to catch rare Pokémon
Submitted 6 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
orgrinrt@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Now hold on a moment, I think we need to at least discuss this whole removing France thing further…
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
It would be easy to accidentally wipe some other country instead of France. That’s why we need to verify data
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It was great, in 2017
It hasn’t stopped being great.
We need better safe guards and checks so that some person can’t just delete France.
The map is updated millions of times per day. There are checks in place, but sometimes one is missed especially if it’s a minor contribution such as “this street has a bus stop”. Deleting France, yeah someone would notice that change and prevent it from taking place.
jeffw@lemmy.world 6 months ago
“I stopped liking this thing, why doesn’t everyone else agree with me?!?!”
MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
They never really dealt with the games biggest issue though and that was the massive battery drain. Once they hype died down it was just a way to kill my phone faster when I’m out and about and will more likely need it before I can charge it again.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 6 months ago
What’s France? All I see on the map is Spain, Germany, and Belgium.
sawdustprophet@midwest.social 6 months ago
What’s France?
“Wester Germany”
pixel@pawb.social 6 months ago
More pokemon makes the game objectively better, especially if you care about newer generations for any reason at all
and even if the game hasn’t evolved much, a cute game that encourages me and my partner to go on more walks together is a net positive in my life lol
whoreticulture@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
It’s a game where you walk around and catch pokemon… why where there suddenly cease to be demand for that the premise is great. Not my thing but I get why people are into it.
shani66@ani.social 6 months ago
Let’s be real, it was mid even back then.
Zoomboingding@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Hard disagree. It got me walking around and exploring my town. It got me in contact with other Pokemon fans. It’s added an extra layer of reality on top of everywhere I go - vacations become rare opportunities for indiginous species hunting, which in turn become valuable trade offers.
Exercise is now a game, and I would otherwise be in front of a PC screen.
shortwavesurfer@monero.town 6 months ago
I was not aware of this used to open street maps at all. I thought it was based on Google Maps. Still.
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
If they used Google maps, Niantic would have to pay Google. That’s no Bueno. Why pay for content critical to your apps success when you could just freeload on volunteers work instead?
n2burns@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I know this seems like Niantic is free-loading, but this is intentionally-allowed by the ODbL license and honestly, might be a good business decision even without considering the licensing fees. OSM is almost 20 years old and as a community led project, is probably more predictable and stable than a Google license which could change drastically from one contract to the next.
As a OSM contributor, I’m more than happy to see my work used this way, and as @QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world pointed out, OSM has seen a lot of benefit too.
tal@lemmy.today 6 months ago
when you could just freeload on volunteers work instead?
Part of – if not the primary point – of OSM is that people can use its database in their projects. That’s a feature, not a bug. They could have very readily restricted commercial use of the database and chose not to do so.
otp@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Pokemon Go brought more users to OpenMaps, so there was definitely some mutual benefit going on.
Vandals, yes, but plenty of legit contributers, too.
catloaf@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Niantic is a Google spinoff, and the data they generated for Ingress was used for Google Maps. I’m surprised they don’t have a special deal with Google.
lowleveldata@programming.dev 6 months ago
Also that you don’t want to be depending on Google’s products if you don’t want to revamp every 2~3 years
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
For anyone else that didn’t read the article (or can’t hear words in parentheses because they are too quiet):
According to a report from 404 Media, some of those players have been adding fake beaches to OpenStreetMap so they could have easier access to the beach biome in Pokémon Go (though the game Go initially used Google Maps data, it apparently switched to OpenStreetMap at some point in 2017).
sepiroth154@feddit.nl 6 months ago
Why does every article fail to mention that the ongame map os only updates once every 3 years or so, and that this griefing is most likely done once per personen, until they find put that the game isn’t updated? (Because it’s not sensational)
amzd@kbin.social 6 months ago
That doesn’t change the fact that it causes problems for openstreetmap
sepiroth154@feddit.nl 6 months ago
It does not. But it means they are trying to limit the dage cause by griefers, and moreso than just displaying a popup message woth “please don’t grief openstreetmaps” or something.
sepiroth154@feddit.nl 6 months ago
No but it adds context.
hahattpro@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Nothing new. People doing this for years.
I know my neighbour who take photo of the god altar in his house and put as location on google map.
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 6 months ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The game is currently in the process of adding monsters from Scarlet and Violet, and that’s where this story begins.
Two of the latest additions to the Pokémon Go roster are Wiglett and Wugtrio, riffs on the designs of Diglett and Dugtrio, who live on beaches and look kind of like garden eels.
OpenStreetMap contributors have discovered “beaches” that were actually located in residential backyards, golf courses, and sports fields.
Entire blog posts, wiki entries, and presentations from OSM mappers exist to bridge the knowledge gap, explaining the purpose of OpenStreetMap data to Pokémon Go users and breaking down Pokémon Go game mechanics for frustrated OSM contributors.
As that OSM blog post implies, not every user who discovers the OpenStreetMap project via Pokémon Go ends up messing with the data.
Though many users are “truth-stretching” vandals who create nonexistent parks, beaches, and footways to encourage specific Pokémon to spawn, others become “very careful, trustworthy” OSM users who “make many worthy additions to the map” by accurately mapping out places where OSM’s data is patchy or outdated.
The original article contains 406 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 58%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It’s worth pointing out that once Pokémon Go players found out about OSM, we saw a massive increase in new users as well as those contributing to OSM so that the maps would better reflect the areas they played in.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334378297_How_an_augmented_reality_game_Pokemon_GO_affected_volunteer_contributions_to_OpenStreetMap
Unfortunately there are always a few that will try to game any system. In this case they’re essentially vandalizing OSM for their own selfish reasons.